SPECIMEN OF HIEROGLYPHIC ALPHABET. (From Champollion's Egypt.)
The above illustrations from English characters are only given as the simplest way of conveying to the minds of those who have had no previous acquaintance with the subject, an idea of the nature of the process and force of the evidence, upon which the decipherment of hieroglyphic inscriptions is based. In reality the process was far from being so simple. Though many of the hieroglyphics are phonetics, like our letters of the alphabet, they are not all so, and many of them are purely ideographic, as when we write 1, 2, 3, for one, two, and three. All writing has begun with picture-writing, and each character was originally a likeness of the object which it was wished to represent. The next stage was to use the character not only for the material object, but as a symbol for some abstract idea associated with it. Thus the picture of a lion might stand either for an actual lion, or for fierceness, courage, majesty, or other attribute of the king of animals. In this way it became possible to convey meanings to the mind through the eye, but it involved both an enormous number of characters, and the use of homophones, i.e. of single characters standing for a number of separate ideas. To obviate this, what are called "determinatives" were invented, i.e. special signs affixed to characters or groups of characters to determine the sense in which they were to be taken. For instance, the picture of a star (*) affixed to a group of hieroglyphics may be used to denote that they represent the name of a god, or some divine or heavenly attribute; and the picture of rippling water ~~~~~~~~ to show that the group means something connected with water, as a sea or river. Beyond this the Chinese have hardly gone, and it is reckoned that it requires some 1358 separate characters, or conventionalized pictures, taken in distinct groups, to be able to read and write correctly the 40,000 words in the Chinese language. Even for the ordinary purposes of life a Chinaman instead of committing to memory twenty-six letters of the alphabet, like an English child, has to learn by heart some 6000 or 7000 groups of characters often distinguished only by slight dots and dashes. Such a system is cumbrous in the extreme, and involves spending many of the best years of life in acquiring the first rudiments of knowledge. Indeed it is only possible when not only writing but speech has been arrested at the first stage of its development, and a nation speaks a language of monosyllables. In the case of Egypt and other ancient nations the standpoint of writing went further, and the symbolic pictures came to represent phonograms, i.e. sounds or spoken words instead of ideas or objects; and these again were further analyzed into syllabaries, or the component articulate sounds which make up words; and these finally into their ultimate elements of a few simple sounds, or letters of an alphabet, the various combinations of which will express all the complex sounds or words of a spoken language.
Now in the hieroglyphic writing of ancient Egypt, along with those pure phonetics or letters of an alphabet, are found numerous survivals of the older systems from which they sprung, and Champollion, who first attempted the task of forming a hieroglyphic dictionary and grammar, had to contend with all the difficulties of ideograms, polyphones, determinatives, and other obstacles.
Those who wish to pursue this interesting subject further will do well to read Dr. Isaac Taylor's book on the Alphabet, and Sayce on the Science of Writing; but for my present purpose it is sufficient to establish the scientific certainty of the process by which hieroglyphic texts are read. With this key a vast mass of constantly accumulating evidence has been brought to light, illustrating not only the chronology and history of ancient Egypt, but also its social and political condition, its literature and religion, science and art. The first question naturally was how far the monuments confirmed or disproved the lists of Manetho. Manetho was a learned priest of a celebrated temple, who must have had access to all the temple and royal records and other literature of Egypt, and who must have been also conversant with foreign literature, to have been selected as the best man to write a complete history of his native country for the royal library in Greek. Manetho's lists of the reigns of dynasties and kings when summed up show a date of 5867 b.c. for the foundation of the united Egyptian Empire by Menes, a date which is of course absolutely inconsistent with those given by Genesis, not only for the Deluge, but for the original Creation.
It is evident that the monuments alone could confirm or contradict these lists, and give a solid basis for Egyptian chronology and history. This has now been done to such an extent that it may fairly be said that Manetho has been confirmed, and it is fully established, as a fact acquired by science, that nearly all his kings and dynasties are proved by monuments to have existed, and that successively and not simultaneously, so that the margin of uncertainty as to the date of Menes is reduced to one of a few hundred years on one side or other of 5000 b.c.
Mariette, who is the best and latest authority, and who has done so much to discover monuments of the earlier dynasties, concludes, as the result of a careful revision of Manetho's lists, and of the authentic records from temples, tombs, and papyri, that 5004 b.c. is the most probable date for the accession of Menes, and this date is generally adopted by modern Egyptologists. Some make it rather longer, as Boeck 5702 b.c., and Unger 5613 b.c.; while others make it a little shorter, as Maspero 4500 b.c., and Brugsch[1] 4455; but it is to be observed that the date has always lengthened with the progress of discovery. Thus the earlier Egyptologists such as Wilkinson, Birch, and Poole assigned a date not exceeding 3000 b.c. for the accession of Menes; twenty years later Bunsen and Lepsius gave respectively 3623 and 3892 b.c.; and since the latest discoveries, no competent scholar assigns a lower date than 4500 b.c., while some go up to 5702 b.c., and that most generally accepted is 5004 b.c. It is safe to conclude, therefore, that about 5000 b.c., or very nearly 7000 years before the present time, may be taken provisionally as the date of the commencement of authentic Egyptian history, and that if this date be corrected by future discoveries it is more likely to be increased than diminished.
This immensely long period of Egyptian history is divided into three stages—the Old, the Middle, and the New Empires. The Old Empire began with Menes, and lasted without interruption for about 1500 years, under six dynasties of kings, who ruled over the whole of Egypt. It was a period of peace, prosperity, and progress, during which the pyramids, the greatest of all human works, were built, literature flourished, and the industrial and fine arts attained a high degree of perfection.
At the very commencement of this period we find the first King Menes carrying out a great work of hydraulic engineering, by which the course of the Nile was diverted, and a site obtained on its western banks for the new capital of Memphis. His immediate successor is said to have written a celebrated treatise on Medicine, and the extremely life-like portrait-statues and wooden statuettes, which were never equalled in any subsequent stage of Egyptian art, date back to the fourth dynasty.
